


remake, rebirth, revival

by cruellae (tinkabelladk)



Category: Compilation of Final Fantasy VII, Final Fantasy VII
Genre: Avalanche, M/M, Midgar, Original game spoilers, Remake spoilers, Sector 7 - Freeform, wall market
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-04-18
Updated: 2020-04-23
Packaged: 2021-03-02 03:08:34
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 4,301
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23718721
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tinkabelladk/pseuds/cruellae
Summary: Cloud stays in Midgar a little longer. Sephiroth comes home.*Spoilers for the Remake and the original game.*
Relationships: Sephiroth/Cloud Strife
Comments: 29
Kudos: 118





	1. Chapter 1

The Honeybee Inn pulsed with music, Honeygirls and Honeyboys in their bee costumes flitting from table to table, or snuggled beside the wealthier patrons in their front booths. Avalanche had commandeered an entire table, tucked away in a private alcove where the drinks had been flowing all night thanks to Madame M, who harbored a deep seated hatred for Shinra and an inexplicable fondness for Barret. 

Golden lights draped in gauze made a sort of curtain, cutting them off from the rest of the room and parting only to admit a Honeygirl with a fresh round of drinks. Cloud was surprised to see the cup in his hand was already empty. He had been letting his guard down more and more with Avalanche. 

_ Careless.  _

But he accepted the next drink anyway, at Jessie’s urging. It was, after all, much higher quality than anything he would have bought for himself. He was halfway daydreaming, letting his mind wander along with the music, when he heard that name—the one that always sent a tendril of ice down his spine. He glanced around the table, focused again on the conversation. 

“Oh my god,” Jessie was saying, her eyes bright and sly. “I had such a crush on him as a kid. Put his poster in my bedroom and everything.” 

“You weren’t the only one,” Tifa said, but she wasn’t smiling, looking down into her drink. “Cloud was his number one fan.” 

“You’re drunk,” Cloud said, reaching for her glass. She had to be, or she would never say anything about  _ him _ . 

“I’m not,” she said, only proving her point when she tried to punch him and missed. 

“So I’m just gonna come out and say this,” Barret said, glancing at Cloud, and then at Tifa. “What’s the deal with you two and Sephiroth? Whenever somebody says his name, you two both look like someone just stepped on your grave.” 

“Cloud doesn’t know the story,” Tifa slurred, snatching her beer from him and spilling half of it on the table. “He doesn’t know what Sephiroth  _ did. _ ” 

“Of course I know!” Cloud glared at Tifa, his heart racing. “How can you say that? I was right there.” 

“Sure you were,” she said bitterly. “Fine, Cloud. If you really were there, then tell them what happened. Tell them what Sephiroth did to our home.” 

Cloud looked at her, then at the rest of Avalanche, and realized he had no choice. So he told them, as best he could. 

But they could never know what it had really been like. 

Arriving in his hometown by Sephiroth’s side, the town he’d left to become a SOLDIER and never returned to. Sephiroth gave him leave to visit family, so he’d spent the afternoon with his mother as the golden sunshine slowly faded to evening, her low, lilting voice drifting from the kitchen.  _ “Have you found someone? A nice older woman who will take care of you?” _

Tifa guiding them up the mountain, her footing sure and quick, and the dragon they fought on the way, slain with only a few deft strokes of the Masamune. 

Their trip into the reactor, the strange creatures they found twisted in their mako chambers, the metal letters above the great steel door—JENOVA. 

Sephiroth, his hands pressed to the glass of one of the tanks.  _ “I always knew mine was a special existence. But this is not what I meant!” _

The week Sephiroth spent in the hidden library in Shinra Manor, surrounded by open books and hastily scrawled notes, his hair falling into his face as he spoke madly of the Ancients, the Promised Land. 

Finding Nibelheim in flames, the acrid smoke thick in the air and Sephiroth walking through the fire like he couldn’t even feel the heat, glancing back over his shoulder with a sinister smile for Cloud as he went. 

Their desperate battle in the reactor, the both of them bleeding and broken, Sephiroth cradling Jenova’s head in his arms as he fell into the mako glow at the base, the Masamune glinting wildly in his hand. 

And then—

And then—

_ Static _ . 

Cloud shook his head to clear it, and looked around the room. “So that’s it.” He cleared his throat. “That’s why I…”

The music pulsated around them, but his entire table was quiet, all of them watching Cloud. 

“Ah, hell,” Barret said. He put his arm around Tifa, who had been quietly crying since Cloud started talking about the fire, and pulled her close. He leaned into her, pressing his lips to the top of her head. “It’s okay. I promise it’s gonna be okay.” 

Cloud looked away. “I gotta go,” he said, stumbling to his feet. “Sorry.” 

He weaved through the patrons and Honeygirls, trying not to bump into anyone’s stinger, until he finally made it out into the open entryway. 

Biggs caught up to him just before he stepped out the door. “Hey, you okay?” he asked, grabbing Cloud by the arm. 

“I’m fine,” Cloud said, turning to him. “Really. Just need some air.” 

“Sure,” Biggs said. “Well. You can always talk to me. I’ll catch you back in Sector Seven probably.” 

“Yeah,” Cloud replied uneasily. “Thanks.” 

He walked back to Sector Seven through the slums, the Buster Sword a comforting weight on his back. Unbidden, he remembered the part of the story he hadn’t shared with the others, the part too intimate to disclose. He kept it nestled close to his heart, and even after all this time and Sephiroth’s betrayal, he’d never forgotten what they were to each other. 

_ “It’s late,” Cloud said, joining Sephiroth at the window that looked out over Nibelheim, blanketed under snow and stars. “You should come to bed.”  _

_ Sephiroth turned to him. His eyes glowed a vibrant green in the dim light. The Shinra troopers were asleep in the room beside them, probably dreaming of being SOLDIERs themselves someday.  _

_ “It’s cold,” Cloud added, hoping for a bit of sympathy from his habitually standoffish lover. “And I’m lonely.”  _

_ Sephiroth’s mouth turned up slightly at one corner, a subtle hint of fondness. “You really are just like a puppy. Find an extra blanket, SOLDIER First Class—”  _

—the image shifts, distorts, and then—

Static. 


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Did I say there would be spoilers? Because there are spoilers. Beware.

Hojo had long considered Project S to be a failure despite the nearly thirty years of care he had put into it. While the subject had succeeded in communing with Jenova, he had not been strong enough to resist her manipulations, and had become little more than her tool of destruction. 

That was  _ not  _ the fate Hojo had intended. Sephiroth was supposed to master the power Jenova gave him, not be consumed by it. 

As much as it pained him to end the experiment, to pack up the boxes and boxes of notebooks documenting Sephiroth’s life from conception to death and archive all of the lovingly detailed data files, Hojo had no choice but to move on. 

Where he had once been indifferent to suffering and pragmatic to a fault, he became bitter, cruel and vicious. Sephiroth’s fall from grace haunted him, even as he reached new heights of genetic manipulation and broadened planetary knowledge. Five years passed, and his achievements only grew, but none of them satisfied him. 

He was not a man who endured failure well. He was not a man who knew how to grieve. 

“You know, I tire of all of it sometimes,” Hojo said to the zenene that had come to sniff at him as he worked at a terminal set in the very base of his laboratory in Shinra Tower. “No one has an appreciation for science anymore.” 

The beast huffed at him through its jagged teeth, and he reached out absentmindedly to scritch it along its red mane. 

“Sephiroth always used to be interested in my research,” Hojo continued, his fingers clacking mindlessly on the keys as he retrieved the latest data. “He’d ask intelligent questions, not like the inane inquiries I get from Heidegger and the President. I really should have had him kill the both of them while I had the chance.” 

The zenene sat back on its haunches like a dog, waiting patiently. It was one of a strain that had been bred and engineered to work alongside SOLDIERs, but although obedient, they tended to go berserk in combat. The few remaining specimens now guarded Hojo’s lab. 

“You know, Sephiroth wouldn’t….” Hojo trailed off as the latest lifestream readings began to fill the screen in glowing green text. 

The same pattern was there, the one he had thought was an error. But no, the strange result was replicating, again and again. Another energy signal, caught in the lifestream’s current. But separate, as though this consciousness could not join with the stream of souls. As though it were tainted by something not of this planet. 

_ It couldn’t be. _

But it was. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> In the remake (and some extent the original game) Hojo is very "mwhahaha insane mad scientist." But I honestly think that he's a little more complex than that.


	3. Chapter 3

Sephiroth’s body lay on the metal table in Hojo’s lab, unnaturally still and broken. President Shinra had it retrieved from the base of the reactor and put into cryogenic storage, and for five years had been pestering Hojo to make use of it in some way. To recoup some of the massive investment Shinra had put into Sephiroth. 

And now Hojo would. Not for Shinra, of course, but for the furtherance of knowledge. To push the limits of the known and the possible that much more. 

_ To save his son.  _

It was clear now that Sephiroth’s consciousness had not merged with the lifestream, as souls were meant to do upon death, but rather lingered. And of late, his presence in Midgar had spiked, as though something were drawing him to the city. Drawing him home. 

It wasn’t Jenova that drew him, but something Hojo couldn’t divine. Jenova was still in Shinra Tower, now surrounded by a barrier that neutralized the strange pulses of energy she sent out, the communication that had allowed her to take over Sephiroth’s mind. 

It hadn’t taken long—Hojo had worked feverishly, like a man possessed, to both isolate Jenova and create the apparatus that loomed over Sephiroth’s body, the extractor that would capture his essence, concentrate it, and return it to his body. 

It would doubtless be painful—Sephiroth’s body was mangled from his fall to the base of the reactor, wounded from a swordfight. But even as a child Sephiroth had a remarkable pain tolerance. He would survive. He would return. And Hojo could begin the experiment all over again. 

Sephiroth was not dead, but neither was he truly alive. No longer tied to a body, his consciousness wove in and out of the cursed lifestream, shunned for his alien origins, feared for the destruction he wished to rain down upon the Planet. At times, he was spread thin and aware of nothing, but other times, his being coalesced into a creature that closely resembled the man he had been, even if the specter possessed only a fraction of the power he once had. 

It took a great deal of energy and effort to manifest his will in such a physical way, but it was worth it to see Cloud Strife’s eyes widen with terror, his hand wildly gripping the hilt of his sword. 

“You’re not real.” His voice trembled with fear and with fury. “You’re not real!” 

Sephiroth smiled. It was arousing in every sense of the word to see the hate and anguish in Cloud’s heart stir so violently. He felt the connection between them come alive, dazzlingly bright and thrumming with potential. 

He told Cloud that his mother had died in pain, calling for her son. Cloud’s response was predictable, but no less enthralling for it. It was a lie, of course—Claudia Strife had been collateral damage, nothing more. He would have laughed, back then, at the idea that a boy like Strife could be the one to slay the world’s greatest hero. 

Now, however, he was glad it had been Cloud who threw him off the edge of the walkway into the depths of the reactor. Because they were tied together in a way that could never be broken. Cloud hated Sephiroth, and as long as he kept that flame burning so brightly, Sephiroth could remain with him. 

“Hold onto that hate, Cloud,” he murmured, watching Cloud leap forward, his sword raised in a wild arc. But before Sephiroth could summon the Masamune to meet it, the world was jerked away from him all in a flash, and he was surrounded by darkness.

For a moment, all he could feel was cold. But it was quickly replaced by the searing hot sensation of pain. A pain he remembered from  _ before _ . 

He opened his eyes to the blinding glare of surgical lights. It wasn’t an unfamiliar sensation. 

“Sephiroth.” Hojo was leaning over him, syringe in hand and brow furrowed in seriousness. “Can you hear her?” 

“No,” Sephiroth said. His voice was rough and hoarse from disuse. “Is she...gone?” 

Already, he knew she was. If Mother were here, she would never let him suffer so. She would sing the song that bound them together, that eased heartache and soothed away anguish. 

“She’s...contained. For now.” Hojo jabbed the syringe into the side of Sephiroth’s neck. Some kind of painkiller and sedative both—only Hojo was really skilled enough to mix a cocktail that could affect Sephiroth’s unique biology. Right now, he was grateful for it. 

“Worry about her later,” Hojo said, as Sephiroth’s vision began to blur. “Focus on healing for now. We have much work to do together, you and I.” 

Just as Sephiroth’s eyes slipped closed, he felt Hojo’s fingertips brush very briefly over his forehead. “Sleep,” Hojo said, and so he did. 


	4. Chapter 4

“Shouldn’t you be recuperating in your enclosure?” Hojo’s voice, flat and annoyed, came from the metallic pathway that twined across the upper level of the lab. 

Sephiroth, who had been making his way through the maze-like mess of experiments toward the elevator, narrowed his eyes in annoyance. It reminded him of his teenage years, how often he tried to leave the laboratory where he was raised and how his desire for freedom had always been denied. Until Shinra saw that he was as clever as he was powerful, that he could lead their troops to victory in an unwinnable conflict. 

Then, he had been given freedom, of a sort. But never quite what he yearned for. 

“I’ve fully recovered,” he called back, his voice echoing across the empty space of the drum. He’d lost track of time, cooped up in this dark corner of Shinra Tower with nothing to do, but it had been more than long enough. 

“Sephiroth.” Hojo crossed his arms. “Come speak to me properly.” 

Sephiroth sighed and shrugged off his jacket. In an instant, his wing appeared, full and dark and glorious, behind his right shoulder. He flew up to the railing and landed beside Hojo. 

“I’ll come back,” he promised Hojo, if only because he had nowhere else to go, no purpose that he could fathom. “There’s something I need to take care of.” 

“And what would that be?” Hojo peered at him, hawklike. Sephiroth’s creator, his faithful chronicler—he was all Sephiroth had, and probably the closest thing to a father Sephiroth would ever know. 

“The boy who killed me,” Sephiroth said. “He’s here, in Midgar.”

“You can sense him,” Hojo deduced. 

Sephiroth only nodded, though it was more than just that. His consciousness had been fragmented, after his death, but cohesive enough for a few things to slip through. Somehow, he had become inextricably intertwined with Cloud Strife, and not even death had been enough to pull them apart. 

“He’s nothing more than a failed experiment,” Hojo said dismissively. “Of no consequence to you or anyone.”

“Then he should be easy enough to kill,” Sephiroth said. But deep within himself, a hint of uncertainty stirred. 

Cloud Strife was not a hard man to find. A quick hack into the Turks’ database placed Sephiroth in the right neighborhood. From there, it was a simple task to follow the invisible strings that tied them together, until he stood outside a tarnished metal door in a sagging apartment building in the Sector Seven slums. 

It was past midnight, the sector still and dark around him. But Cloud was not asleep. Sephiroth could not say how he knew that, but he did. 

He wasn’t sure what he intended to do with Cloud once they were reunited. Certainly Cloud had killed him, and part of him wanted revenge, or perhaps he was just so annoyed at having lost a fight that he itched for a rematch. 

He considered it, standing just outside the door. Cloud’s blood running down the gleaming silver length of the Masamune. The way his blue eyes would glaze over as his vitality slowly drained away. The words that might slip from his lips, sweet as drops of honey when he begged for his life. 

The door in front of him clicked, then the knob turned and it swung open. Cloud took one look at Sephiroth and his eyes widened, his mouth opened, and then—

The Masamune had fully materialized, its hilt a comforting weight in Sephiroth’s palm. Cloud hadn’t even noticed the sword appear. His eyes were on Sephiroth’s face, tracking every expression, every subtle shift. 

“It’s you,” he said, and he was breathless, but not from fear. “It’s really you. Isn’t it?”

And then, instead of reaching for his sword, Cloud lunged forward recklessly and threw his arms around Sephiroth, squeezing him tightly. 

“I missed you,” Cloud murmured. 

“You...did?” Sephiroth asked, puzzled. 

Cloud let him go and stepped back with a smile on his face. It didn’t sit comfortably—he was obviously not a man who smiled often. 

“I know you,” Cloud said confidently. “And I know when it’s really you, and when someone else is controlling you.” He looked away. “I thought you were dead, and she was all that was left.” 

Sephiroth had no idea how to react—this was the last thing he would ever have thought to plan for. 

Cloud took Sephiroth’s hand and pulled him into the sparse apartment. It was tidy but mostly empty. The Buster Sword, propped up against the far wall, was the only personal touch. Sephiroth knew that Angeal had entrusted the heirloom to Zack Fair, and Zack wouldn’t have parted with it. Yet here it was. 

Cloud moved more quickly than anyone without mako enhancements would be able to, invading Sephiroth’s personal space with a single graceful step. He looked up at Sephiroth, still six inches shorter even given the spikes of his hair, but he was no longer a boy. He’d clearly come into his manhood in the time Sephiroth had been gone, and there was a fierce determination to the set of his chin, a hardness in his eyes...eyes that glowed mako-bright, like a SOLDIER’s...

“Cloud,” Sephiroth said. “Your eyes, how—”

Cloud cut off the rest of his question with a kiss. He had to slip his arms around Sephiroth’s neck and pull him down to account for the height difference, but somehow he accomplished it in a heartbeat. And Sephiroth, who had not been touched by another person in five years—with the exception of Hojo’s assistants who had attended to his injuries when he awoke on the lab table—was too stunned to resist. 

“I don’t understand,” he said, when Cloud released him and stepped back. “What are you doing?” 

Cloud gave him the slightest hint of a smile. “It’s not obvious?” He reached for Sephiroth’s hand and tugged him gently across the small space that separated them from the bed. It was made with military precision, likely a holdover from Cloud’s days as a grunt in the Shinra army. 

Sephiroth hesitated. This was so strange, so unexpected, and yet it didn’t feel wrong.

“I don’t wanna talk,” Cloud sat on the bed, tugging Sephiroth still closer. Despite his great strength, Sephiroth felt powerless to resist. “Just be with me. Forget everything else and just...be.” 

Sephiroth leaned in, slowly pushing Cloud back down on the sheets. His touch was light, careful, and if Cloud had wanted to, he would have been easily able to break free. But he surrendered willingly, despite all that had been between them before. The connection between them—created by Jenova and fed by violence and obsession—thrummed through Sephiroth, a true note with which he could not stop resonating. 

He wondered if Cloud felt the same. 

He put his hand on Cloud’s neck, and Cloud tensed but did not stop him as he ran his thumb over the fine column of Cloud’s throat. 

“This is not the welcome I expected,” he said. 

“I can tell when it’s you,” Cloud said. “Just by looking in your eyes. I know when it’s you and when it’s her, pulling the strings.” 

Pulling the strings was perhaps an overly simplistic way of describing the connection Sephiroth had to Jenova. While he couldn’t deny that he hadn’t been fully himself, neither could he be fully absolved of his actions. Still, he had done far worse in Wutai than burn down a single village. What kept him awake at night was not the fire or the screams of the dying, but rather the lack of control he’d shown, the untethered viciousness. 

But he didn’t say as much to Cloud. It would have taken a far, far better man than Sephiroth to turn away from the gift that was being offered, however mysterious the motive might be. Beneath him was Cloud; strong, beautiful, courageous. The hero of the story, shining and pure, and Sephiroth’s body ached with the desire to claim him and defile him. 

He kissed Cloud, hard and fierce, then shoved Cloud’s legs apart so he could kneel between them, leaning over his prey. Captivated, he brushed away a bit of blood on Cloud’s lip from the bruising kiss. 

“Will you scream for me?” he asked, fisting one hand in Cloud’s mess of blonde spikes. 

Cloud’s eyes widened, and for a moment he looked achingly young and vulnerable. He was breathtaking like that, the hidden sweetness at his core exposed. 

_ It would be so easy to break him.  _

“Is this how we—” Cloud began, then gasped softly, his eyes squeezed shut and his hand pressed to his head like he was in pain.

Sephiroth pulled back, watching him carefully. He didn’t know how to respond, whether it should be with comfort or cruelty. 

Cloud let out a long, shaky sigh and opened his eyes. “It’s okay,” he said, reaching for Sephiroth’s wrist and drawing him closer. “Anything you want. That’s how it used to be, right?” 

Sephiroth reached out and brushed his thumb along the line of Cloud’s cheekbone, marveling at the trust that was being offered. He couldn’t remember ever having earned it.

He remembered vivid fragments of the time after his death, the cool touch of the lifestream, the siren song of Jenova, and the magnetic pull that drew him to Cloud, always Cloud. Back then it had been a dark thrill, to see Cloud’s eyes widen in fear or narrow in fury, to watch his knuckles turn white as he gripped his sword. 

What Sephiroth felt now was different, and yet at the heart it was the same impulse, the same need. 

_ Mine.  _

“Come here,” he said, pulling Cloud up and into a seated position so he could unfasten the straps that held his heavy shoulder plate in place. Though his own armor fastened differently, his fingers remembered the process—he used to do it for Zack, who always complained about how cumbersome the SOLDIER armor was to take on and off. 

He wondered what had happened to Zack, and how Cloud had come to have the Buster Sword. But when he asked, Cloud’s head snapped to the side, his eyes squeezed shut in pain, and after a few seconds he blinked at Sephiroth like he wasn’t even sure where he was. 

“You’re not well,” Sephiroth said. It was obvious there was something deeply wrong with Cloud, something broken and then buried. 

“I’m fine,” Cloud protested, looking away. 

Sephiroth felt a strange pull, an overwhelming protectiveness. During the war, he had been protective of the men who were under his command, and this was a similar sensation, but wildly magnified. 

“You haven’t been sleeping,” he said. He could feel, through their bond, the exhaustion that tugged at Cloud. He could see it in the tension around Cloud’s eyes, the circles beneath. It worried him, set him on edge.

Cloud shrugged, but went willingly when Sephiroth pushed him back down onto the bed. “It gets cold. And I’m lonely.” 

The words didn’t sound quite right, like they weren’t coming from Cloud, but rather an echo from someone else. Someone familiar, a memory just at the edge of awareness.

Sephiroth sat up and tugged off his long black coat. He draped it over Cloud, who gave him a startled glance. 

“That will keep you warm,” Sephiroth said. “Get some rest, Cloud.” 

Cloud gave him a small smile and closed his eyes. Sephiroth lingered in Cloud’s apartment for as long as he dared, listening to the noises of the slum outside and trying to make sense of what had happened. What did Cloud want from him, and why was he so quick to trust? Why did Sephiroth find it so difficult to turn him away? Where did it come from, this strange desire to heal and protect where there should be the urge to do harm? 

He was missing a piece of the puzzle, the key to whatever was broken within Cloud’s mind. But if finding that truth meant breaking the spell that had fallen over them this night, he thought he might rather let it remain lost, forever. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> you guys. this chapter gave me so much stress. especially the ending, which I rewrote like 15 times.


End file.
